


and you know we're on each other's team

by myillusionsgone



Series: where we emphasize the importance of good teachers [6]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21853192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myillusionsgone/pseuds/myillusionsgone
Summary: Wherein a broken wrist is quite possibly Sherry's smallest headache.
Relationships: Sherry Blendy & Chelia Blendy
Series: where we emphasize the importance of good teachers [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567756
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	and you know we're on each other's team

**Author's Note:**

> Compared to the other work in this series featuring Sherry, she will sound a lot more casual here, but that is due to Fiorean (which she spoke in the other work) not being her native language whereas this time, she speaks her first language, Icebergian.

She had not planned to travel back to Iceberg before the winter festival, but she could not work with a broken wrist and the question she currently sought could not be found in Lamia Scale's extensive library. Sherry knew because she had checked. Three times, with Ooba-sama forbidding her to look again and to rest instead. And the marionette mage recognised orders, even if they were not phrased as such. It meant that she knew fully well that she was travelling to visit her family with every intention to slightly bend the rules.

There were marvelous libraries in Iceberg's capital and as daughter of a family of academics, Sherry had easy access to them. Too easy, her grandfather had said when he had spotted her pining after a particular tome. In Zinnia, nobody told her that she was too young to flirt with particular branches of magic, but her grandfather had shook his head and quietly said no. That had been last year and she knew in her bones that this year, it would be no different. Begrudingly, she had had to admit that her grandfather probably had a point. The only one in her family to study magic in a way similar to her own, he was the one who would know. And maybe it was better to listen to him than to sulk over a book she could have. Later. In a couple years.

Even so, there was work to be done and Sherry could probably do it better here where the books were written in a language she did not have to think about, where she could find likeminded individuals. When they had moved back from Fiore, her parents had bought a house a stone throw away from from the University of Banquise, one of the most respected places of study in the entire country. 

In Zinnia, Sherry lived in a busy street. In Banquise, she sometimes found nights eerily quiet. After a night of two, she got used to it and did not sit up in her bed, listening for sounds that would never come because at night, their quarter was so quiet that she could probably hear the neighbour sneeze.

( Both had its advantages. )

However, it took about ten seconds for Sherry upon unlocking the frontdoor and entering her other home to know that there was a surprisingly high probability that this night, she might not have to miss the steady noises.

_"Now, now, Lily, just listen to me."_

That was her grandmother's voice and the marionette mage sighed softly. Fights between her mother and her grandmother were rare, but this did not mean that they were not devastating. Because — both women were temperamental and the nonchalance of Edmonia Blendy's voice was, in all likelihood and according to all life experience, only added fuel in her daughter's fire. Sherry groaned as she shrugged off her coat and neatly put it away before she picked up her suitcase again and followed the sweet, sweet sound of home.

The soft carpet on the floor devoured the sound of her footsteps and just before she turned the corner, Sherry halted. She did not have to walk into this, she could just head upstairs and later say that she had been so tired from the journey that all she had been thinking of had been sleep. Only that in her experience, that would likely prompt a reprise of the fight and she was not interested in that.

Her grandmother sighed deeply before she tsked, a habit that ran strong in their family, and continued. "It is not a kidnapping," she said, sounding far too proud of that fact before adding, "technically."

( Maybe Sherry should have stayed in Zinnia after all. It was nice there, around this time of year. )

**"Technically?"**

Had Sherry not known all her life that her mother was not a mage, she would have expected her to breathe fire. Her cheeks were flushed and behind her glasses, green eyes were glinting. The last time the botanist had been this angry, it had been because an unfortunate soul had tampered with the experiment she had been conducting, effectively ruining weeks of work. But this, this might just be even worse, though at the very least, no one had stamped their foot just yet.

Setting down her suitcase, the marionette mage almost groaned again. "Good morning, maman, good morning, mamé," she greeted pleasantly as she stepped into the kitchen, her hands neatly folded in front of her as she refused to acknowledge the tension within the room for the time being. "I am glad to see you well. Oh, I am also doing great. It is so kind of you to ask."

Her grandmother turned towards her, dark eyes lingering on her wrist before she tsked softly. "Sherry dear," she said, her voice far too cheerful and . . . chipper for the early hour of the day, something the girl immediately attributed to a devastating lack of sleep. "You came home at the perfect time, really."

"Your grandmother kidnapped your cousin," her mother said with a huff, leaning against the counter and running her hands through her already messy hair. "So as glad as I am to see you, I'm not sure about this being the _perfect_ time — because your mamé could be arrested."

Sherry froze, then threw her grandmother a glance. As she had expected, there was not much guilt to find in her eyes. She looked back to her mother and found her face oddly unexpressive. For all her life, she had understood that her aunt's notable absence was something that was not spoken about. From offhanded remarks and the like, she had pieced together that her mother and her sister had had a fight and that since, silence reigned between them.

On the other side of the kitchen, Edmonia was rolling her eyes and seemed dangerously unimpressed by the thought that she could be arrested. For the kidnapping of her own granddaughter. Sherry's cousin. That was a thought that needed to sink in, but if the last seventeen years had thought Sherry anything, it was that she would likely not get the time to properly disassemble this chaos to take a good look at the details.

"My daughter is being dramatic, love," her grandmother continued as she gently patted the cast on Sherry's left wrist, trying to be calming in a way best described as wildly unsettling. "All I did was tell your aunt a little white lie and she was happy to hand her daughter over to me. For magic training."

If Sherry had not already had a headache from trying to figure out the new train schedule, she knew that this would have caused the onset of a stress-induced headache. "Mamé," she said weakly, "I'm not going to mediate between maman and you. I will be going upstairs, I will unpack my suitcase and . . . I guess I'll meet my . . . cousin."

"Her name is Chelia," her mother supplied with a tired sigh, rubbing her own temples. "She's nice. And eight. So . . . please be nice."

She nodded quickly before she turned away, not quite fleeing the scene but definitely vacating the area. She had left for Banquise two days ago, boarding only the fastest trains because even if she could not afford it, her family could. _And would_. 

She smiled, tuning out the discussion downstairs and throwing open the door to her room with just the tiniest tug of magic. After all --- there was no healer around to scold her and she was exhausted. Not that this would do, right now. Dropping off her suitcase and washing her face before slipping into soft slippers, she only halted briefly before she left her room.

Beneath her cast, her skin was all itchy and Sherry kept cursing under her breath as she wandered the house, searching for her cousin and wishing she had asked her grandmother to fix it and thus end her suffering. There was the itchiness and there was the frustration any injury brought — as long as she was healing, she was not allowed to train or visit the library to get her hands on the heavier tomes. The more days had passed, the more understanding she had felt for caged animals. She had felt restless in Zinnia and she was still feeling restless here.

She grimaced at her own thought, twin sapphires flickering over to the knitting needles someone ( probably her grandfather ) had left unattended. The idea to use them to poke and to scratch her wrist was tempting, but before she could talk herself out of borrowing them for this purpose, she heard a sound — very akin to a squeak — and she twirled around.

Her first impression of her cousin was that Chelia was tiny. Tinier than Sherry had been at the same age. Thus: far tinier than Sherry would have expected her to be, had she taken the time to consider what she thought her cousin to be life. Then, when she had boarded the train to Iceberg, the idea of having a cousin, a cousin that would be present had never crossed her mind. 

Downstairs, her mother and her grandmother were still fighting, though more or less the same moment Sherry heard her mother utter the word 'defenestration', she also heard the rustle in her father's study just above them, heard the door scratching open and then, Robert Blendy's voice thundered through the house — "Lily, you will not throw your mother out of a window. And can you two please stop fighting? I need to focus on my star charts." 

Despite herself, Sherry exhaled. "Thank you, papa," she muttered to herself before she trained her gaze on her cousin again. Tapping three fingers against her wrist, she beamed down at Chelia. "Hello," she said, not quite as chipper as her grandmother but far more settled. "I'm Sherry."


End file.
